


Times Long Past

by BardofHeartDive



Series: Tresvir [3]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Christmas, Closure, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Late Night Conversations, Moving On, Post-Canon, Post-War, Reminiscing, Reunions, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21882418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardofHeartDive/pseuds/BardofHeartDive
Summary: "We drank a toast to innocence / We drank a toast to time / Reliving, in our eloquence / Another 'Auld Lang Syne'"
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko & Rahna, background Kaidan Alenko/Male Shepard/James Vega
Series: Tresvir [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/873450
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	Times Long Past

**Author's Note:**

> Based on my favorite Christmas song, [Same Old Lang Syne by Dan Fogelberg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27INql8fvt0), which has always felt like Kaidan to me. I have been working on this fic for (literally) 4 years and I am so happy to have finally finished it. Many, MANY thanks to my awesome betas, RockPaperbackScissors and joufancy, and to bioticfox and jo again for all the sprints, pom-pom waving, and general encouragement.

Kaidan hadn’t planned to spend Christmas Eve in the grocery store but somehow between seeing his mom off, making arrangements to get John and James home by New Year, and getting everything squared away with his students and subordinates, he found himself alone in an apartment with no coffee, an empty refrigerator, and exactly half a roll of toilet paper.

The store was only a few blocks away and, although it was snowing, it was unseasonably warm, so he decided to walk. Autumn was his favorite season but winter was a close second. He liked the bite of the cold on his face, the clean, crisp smell of frost, and the crunch of his boots in the snow. Most of the houses in the area had decorations up, lighting the neighborhood in a rainbow of colors. He hummed as he went, “Silver Bells,” followed by “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” and then the first few verses of “Let It Snow.” 

He was standing at the deli counter, trying to convince the attendant that he really only needed a breast even though it was only a few dollars more for a whole rotisserie chicken, when a woman’s laugh caught his attention. He stopped mid-sentence and turned to find the source. A teal wool coat was turning down one of the freezer aisles. 

Chicken forgotten, he followed.

He caught up with her in front of the frozen fruit; she had just put a bag of blueberries into her cart. His first clear look at her face made him pause as he suddenly realized he had no idea what he was going to say to her. Then she rocked back onto her heels and forward again, like she always did when she was thinking, and the movement was so familiar he had to walk up to her and tap her shoulder.

She glanced at him, not really seeing, and murmured “excuse me” as she took a step sideways. Her attention made it halfway back to the freezer door before she stopped and took a better look at him. Her eyes went wide and her face broke into a smile. It wasn’t as breathtaking as he remembered but it was just as warm.

“Oh my god. Kaidan?”

Rahna reached up to hug him, a challenge given the difference in their height, and her purse tipped forward spilling its contents. Cosmetics, credit chits, business cards, and hard candies littered the tile. A bottle of lotion popped open when it hit the ground, splattering both their shoes.

“Shoot!” she sputtered, stooping to pick up the items.

Kaidan couldn’t help but laugh, just like BAaT where the closest she’d ever come to swearing was an emphatic “oops.” His laugh made her laugh, then he laughed harder, and it devolved to tears when he knelt to help her and slipped on the lotion.

“It’s good to see you, Kaidan,” she said, when they finally got back to standing. 

“You too,” he said. She pulled a bag of cherries from the freezer. She would have waited but he gestured down the aisle and fell into step with her. “It’s been a long time.”

“A very long time.”

“What are you doing in Vancouver?”

“Just visiting for the holidays.” Two boxes of frozen pie crusts and she steered them to the checkout line. “Your family’s here, right?”

“Just my mom now.”

“Oh, Kaidan. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Well . . . ”

He trailed off into an awkward laugh, then busied himself with ringing up his own items. Even after four years of rebuilding, the peace seemed so fragile that it might shatter at the mere mention of the war. Fortunately, the galaxy as a whole agreed. Rahna shifted her weight and pulled on her gloves and nodded in understanding. 

“Yeah.” She dropped her eyes to her glove - she had almost jammed her nail through the tip of the thumb - and made a point to grab the handle of the cart. “Would you like to go get a drink? Catch up a little?”

“I would,” he answered. “I’d like that a lot.”

In the end, “a drink” was a six pack of Lighthouse Pale Ale in the back seat of her skycar. After buying the beer at the only open liquor store they could find, Kaidan gave her directions to a park by the bay. The remains of a Reaper corpse jutted out the water and she turned the car away from it to face the city. Most of the skyline was broken buildings and dark because of the power rationing, but there was enough life there to loosen the knot in Kaidan’s throat. He opened two of the bottles and passed one to Rahna.

“To rebuilding,” he said.

“Rebuilding,” Rahna echoed and clinked her beer against his.

“So, you have friends in Vancouver?”

“Gavin does,” she answered. “My husband.”

“You’re married?” 

The question sounded a little more incredulous than he’d meant but Rahna just laughed and said, “For almost . . . gosh, twenty years now.” 

“Huh.” He studied her over his bottle, noticing the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth for the first time. Outside, the snow had started coming down in earnest, covering the windows and sealing them away from the rest of the world. “Guess we’re not kids anymore, are we?”

“Not for a while,” she answered. She raised her drink. “To simpler times.”

And just like that, Kaidan realized his own age, the wrinkles on his own face, the gray at his temples. It might have bothered him but the very next thought was John running his fingers through that gray and James affectionately calling him “old man” before kissing him like a teenager. He tapped their bottles together. 

“So, tell me about him . . . Gavin?”

“He’s an architect. He’s designing the new convention center downtown.” Rahna’s beer was empty. She pulled another from the case and Kaidan finished his in a quick swallow to keep pace. “He’s . . . a good man.”

“‘A good man?’”

“The best.” She laughed again, the same soft, bubbly sound as before but this time with a bitter aftertaste. “Kind. Patient. Funny. He volunteers, donates to charity. Devoted son. Loving husband.” 

“I sense a ‘but’ coming . . . ”

“Not a ‘but,’” she answered, shaking her head. “Just . . . I wish I could say I still loved him.” Another drink and her bottle was half empty. Kaidan looked at his but didn’t drink this time. “We’ve been through so much - not just us, I mean, the galaxy as a whole. Everything’s different and we can’t go back to the way things were before.”

“No.” Kaidan drank to give himself the time he needed to collect his thoughts. “But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Maybe it’s just a new start.”

“Maybe.” 

She smiled but Kaidan saw the doubt in the depths of her dark eyes. It put cold weight in the pit of his stomach, like he was lying to her somehow. He dropped his attention to the bottle in his hands, rolling it between his palms, watching the liquid swirl inside the glass. The pause was long and he had just started trying to come up with something to say when she asked:

“What about you? I saw you on the news awhile back. Alliance major, second human Spectre. You’ve made quite a name for yourself.”

Kaidan laughed and rubbed the blush crawling up the back of his neck. “I guess.”

“You guess,” she teased. “You never could take a compliment. Do you like it at least?”

“I do.” He answered with conviction this time. “It’s mostly rebuilding now. I wish I could make it home more but . . . it’s nice to feel like I’m making a difference. Doing good work.”

“Making a new start.”

He chuckled to hear his words coming back to him and said, “I’ll drink to that,” only to find his bottle empty. She laughed and took the last two from the pack.

“What about you? Are you with someone?”

“Two someones” was the first thing that came to him but it didn’t seem right to say, so he simply answered, “Yeah. I am.” 

“I thought so.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s in your eyes.” She started to lift the bottle but stopped before it reached her lips, savoring the last one maybe, or interrupted by her thoughts. “I never understood why everyone thought you were so mysterious. Your eyes always gave you away.”

He had half a mind to ask what she saw in them now but thought better of it. Two beers might as well have been water but the setting and the company had him loose-lipped. Still, he thought better of the question and instead said, “Maybe they just weren’t paying attention.”

“Probably,” she admitted. “I don’t think Andrew was interested in anything except Shelby.”

“And that hair gel.”

“Oh gosh! Not ‘gel,’ ‘styling product.’ Remember when . . . who was it? Liz? Put food coloring in the bottle?” Rahna burst into a fit of giggles, just like she had then, and Kaidan couldn’t help but join in. “It was that terrible pinkish-orangish-reddish color for weeks. At least you talked him out of trying to fix it, though.”

“I don’t care if red and green make brown, there was no way adding blue and yellow to that disaster was going to make it better.” Kaidan nearly snorted beer out of his nose. “But he was always the one for half-baked ideas. Do you remember the time he convinced Judy that they could up their readings with static and they both ran around in their socks for . . . at least a week?”

“Two or three,” Rahna corrected. “Long enough for her to wear through the wool pair she’d brought from home.”

“I really thought she was going to kill him when she found out he’d made it up.”

“She almost did.”

“That’s right! The pudding . . . ”

Halfway through that memory their beers were gone, so they opened one of the bottles of wine Rahna had planned for Christmas dinner. They shared it, passing the bottle back and forth between them, until it ran out and the stories with it. 

“You - ” Rahna stopped and shook her head. “I should probably be getting back. Can I give you a lift home?” 

“Sure, if you’ve got time. It’s just past the store, those apartments behind the park.” 

They spent the ride back in a silence more comfortable than he’d thought they would ever have again. The last bit of sunlight had long since sunk into the bay and the stars were starting to come out between the clouds when she pulled up in front of the apartment complex.

“It was really nice catching up,” she said, while he adjusted his coat and collected his bags. “I’m glad we ran into each other.”

“Yeah. I mean what are the chances, right? I honestly never thought I’d see you again.”

He hadn’t meant any insinuation but she flinched at the words. Her eyes searched his face, long enough that Kaidan started to worry she might be heading into topics better left forgotten, but then she smiled and simply said,

“Have a merry Christmas, Kaidan.”

She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek as he opened the door and waved through the window as she drove away. Kaidan waited, watching the car until it turned a corner and out of sight. The memory of the last time he watched her leave surged up from wherever it had been buried and he could almost feel the hands on his shoulders, see the silhouette of her cast and splinted arm disappearing behind the doors of the airlock. At the time, he had welcomed the ache in his heart because it dulled the pain in his side. Now it just sharpened James and John’s absence.

A drop of moisture rolled down his cheek and for a moment he thought he was crying, the way he hadn’t let himself before. But then there came another and another and he realized the snow had turned to rain.


End file.
